The heavy lines the dots within circles to represent stations, the thin-bordered loops to represent interchanges, these are all indicative of mass-transit maps.

We're not talking about moving people, though: we're talking about moving oil in various stages of refinement. As we keep re-learning the hard way, oil tends to spill.

A pipeline has existed along this route since 1952 when it was built to transport methane, which Kinder Morgan purchased in 2005. The Trans Mountain expansion proposal calls for an additional pipeline to run in parallel, as well as reactivating decommissioned sections of the existing line. This will nearly double Kinder Morgan's throughput, from 300,000 barrels per day to 590,000.

Spills along the pipeline route would hardly be unprecedented: if you live in Burnaby, you might remember the Burnaby Mountain leak of 2009 (200,000 litres), or the 2007 pipeline rupture that may or may not have reminded you of the opening credits of "The Beverly Hillbillies".

Hang on, wasn't the pipeline project shot down?

You may be thinking of the Northern Gateway Pipeline, pitched by Enbridge. Despite its enthusiasm for the latest in tugboat technology, Enbridge's proposal was rejected by the BC government's joint review panel. You can read the entire 99-page report below if you are so inclined, but the salient line is "'Trust me' is not good enough in this case."

How, then would "trust me" be good enough in Kinder Morgan's case? Not a rhetorical question: the Lower Mainland's stakeholders (which would of course include anyone who lives near the pipeline's route) genuinely want to know.

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